


Virtute diligere

by HelenofTroy



Category: Highlander (Movies)
Genre: Falling In Love, Gen, Highlander Immortals, Memories, Reincarnation, Stalking, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 13:21:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13637097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenofTroy/pseuds/HelenofTroy
Summary: The movie "Highlander" is sacred to me, from my childhood.Sacred among all the Highlander films, because I believe that the Connor MacLeod of the first and original film is not the same Connor of the sequels, and has been almost like in an alternative universe.For me the complete story of Connor MacLeod starts and ends in the first and original film. And delving into it, I would like to complete Connor's reflections on his attraction to Brenda and his fear of falling into an unrequited love and suffering.The lack of his "Virtute diligere" to love. Of that thing such times mentioned by Ramirez.Connor MacLeod is my favorite hero. Without being a superhero, he seems to me to be made of flesh and blood, of fear and loneliness, who was only happy when he loved Heather, his first wife, feeling now returned to him because the doctor in ancient weapons for the forensic department, Brenda Wyatt.





	Virtute diligere

**Author's Note:**

> "Of all the battles, that of love is one you can never be victorious from, brother.  
> Even if you think she loves you more than anyone, and even if it is, love is not a way out for our kind, Connor. It is death, the only one we have known, the only real death we will know.  
> Because even when someone else cuts our heads, it will be our liberation, but losing the woman we love is to feel death as if we were mortal, it's the closest thing to it.  
> Take care of your heart, brother, for even your sword can not save you from loving and suffering for it". 
> 
> (Juan Sánchez Villa Lobos Ramírez)

At least Heather had loved him.

Heather had been the love of his life, and always would be. She was as present, as close to his heart as the first day. But there was something, it was the restlessness that he felt for that woman who was lying to him so much, for Brenda Wyatt who discouraged him.  
For her that night Connor was circling around the block where she lived, again and again like a sleepwalker without strength or will of her own.

"I will not go into her house tonight," he said mentally as if it were a psalm, to deceive himself later.

Well, sheltered in the darkness, he would open the door of her portal every night with his credit card and then the door of Brenda's small flat, as that thief had taught him a century ago in Sicilia. It was the easiest thing in the world.

So much so, that if someone of his immortals siblings had seen a stranger enter the house of the same woman night after night they would have been overwhelmed by the innocence of the people of this new twentieth century.  
Because it was the century of false security.  
Everyone thought he or she was so sure of everything ... just as Ramirez could not have foreseen. Two world wars had not been enough, all the misfortunes either. The world and its inhabitants were kinder now, but they needed to change, they needed to adapt, and stop being so furiously arrogant about their safety and their abilities.  
That was Brenda, that kind of person.

Everything Brenda had shown Connor was lies and contempt.

He knew sge was investigating him, surely with Moran.   
There he was again at her door. Connor liked to wear the same clothes dressed by him when he saw her for the first time, his white beach shoes and his long café-au-lait gabardine, the same clothes he had worn at Madison Square Garden, when she was picking up the shavings of his steel on the wall.

Connor was swimming against Brenda. Step after step he crept into her floor, with the lightness that the centuries had given him to the men of his class.  
He smiled at this prospect when he looked at the mirror before which he had discovered the true identity of Brenda, when she had invited him to dinner several weeks ago. Connor even found yet her book there. Always a challenge.   
So few he was meaning for her actually that she not even had noticed about the book?   
What an idiot i had been!" he repeated over and over again, running his hand over Brenda's dresser, for her painting of the Scottish man and the three little katanas that adorned the furniture at her entrance.

 

He went to Brenda's room, and fell like a sad cat on the chair that was placed in front of the forensic doctor's bed.  
Brenda slept peacefully, as if nothing in this world could touch her.

Her golden curls spread across the pillow like a doll, she was really precious. That night she had arrived later than usual, and she had not removed his make-up. Her pink lips parted revealing the doctor's deep fatigue. 

Brenda did not sleep naked, as half the women claimed they did, but with a flesh-colored nightgown with thin straps that barely covered the shape of her breaths.   
Her bed seemed more revolted than usual.  
Connor passed his big, asleep eyes over the sheets, exposing himself to her awakening, with the creak of the chair, wondering if she might have had company ... God, he was so angry, thinking that Brenda could be with someone else, while he, Connor, was despised by her! How in such centuries he could be hunted by those primordial feelings? Was almost if the immortality suddenly would have turned in low instincts those feelings as human and simple as jealousy or envy. In four hundred years Connor had seen only two women sleeping in bed: Heather, and Rachel.  
He had never had a love affair since his wife, he had never let himself be dragged by any mortal or immortal woman like him. Because he loved Heather. He would not corrupt her memory with the carnal vision of another woman who would also die and who would break his heart again if she was mortal, or another who would have to kill himself in case she was immortal.

Everything was so perfect and smooth in Brenda's house, how complicated her relationship with her was.   
Brenda had agreed to have dinner with him just for interest. Connor had gone to see her because she really liked her, everything else did not matter. 

 

Heather had made her feel extreme happiness, true love, reciprocated from the first moment.

But Brenda made him feel the opposite: it made him feel trapped, lost in his own and worthless existence without end.  
It was obvious that Connor did not like to Brenda. Everything that had to do with him seemed suspicious and disgusting to her.  
No woman could fall in love with a man she found lying and strange. And he ... why was he so infatuated with Brenda? She was very pretty, that was clear, and Connor had already noticed how his male colleagues at work looked at her, even that bartender where he had first approached her ... she was that kind of woman.  
Of those that punished the men with her only presence. Exposing her beauty and showing her disdain at one time. 

But Brenda was not only the star that no one could reach, the impossible woman, but she was the judge.

Every time she spoke to him, it was as if a dagger was sticking in his heart. More Connor felt so strange, so attracted by her low but scornful tone, her thin hands and her defiant eyes.

He felt that I was at home, in her presence. What a strange feeling! But he could not get carried away by her, he could not.  
Connor was falling in love with that woman, hopelessly, but a terrible fear paralyzed him. Because it was an unrequited love, that was obvious.  
Brenda would never have accepted him, even if he was a mortal man.

How sad! -thought again-even though I´d beat the Kurgan she could never love me. Not even with the prize of immortality would that forensic woman want him!  
What a fleeting thing, so stupid and powerful at the same time, was that of love!"  
He could almost hear Ramirez again.

Because every word that Ramirez had told him was in his head, under his blond hair. It was as if they were small recordings of cassettes, placed in a kind of small file, which was activated for each occasion. But it was really the connection that immortality gave them that made them in contact.

-She would not accept me, Ramirez. What can I do?- Connor closed his blue eyes, as well as Brenda's. Ramirez suddenly appeared before him, in the green lands of Scotland again.

"Oh, brother. When it comes to women, the decision is not as clear as it seems. There are two kinds of love you must know, Connor.  
There is true love and passion. It is easy to confuse one with the other, so easy that sometimes you will feel that it is the same, but it is not like that.

You can want a woman, want to possess her body for her beauty, but just try to get that little pleasure, or you can love her with all your soul, Connor. In love there can be passion, but you will never find in passion that flame that can do anything, that wounds everything, and conquers everything. That was what you had with Heather". 

-Yes, Ramirez, but now....

"Hahaha! I know, I know my little Scot-now time has passed and the world has changed. But you must know that love will not change. Not now, not later, not ever. Even if you live five thousand years, or even if they manage to cut your head tomorrow. And now you have to distinguish what kind of love you feel for this new woman, I perceive the conflict in your heart, Connor.-Ramirez´s voice was so soft and cheerful as always. 

Connor opened his eyes, looking the woman again. 

He saw Brenda taking the tests from the wall in the Madison, and then bringing her face closer to his in the bar "Why are you interested in where I come from? You will not be one of those crazy bullies ...".

 

 Now Brenda was at his mercy, as beautiful as he did not remember meeting another. Not even Heather.  
Physically neither his beloved wife could compete with Brenda. Suddenly a guilty feeling ran down Connor´s back, as she watched Brenda's well-shaped breasts, her slow, quiet breathing. He was admiting how much more beautiful Brenda was in comparation to Heather. This feeling was so cold, so devasted for him. Was happening what swore never would, he was betraying the Heather´s memory, staining it with this lust for this new woman. For this unknown.   
While a moment, Connor believed that he could hate Brenda with the same strenght with wich she did it with him. 

All his world, his wife ...  
"You, Bastard," Brenda had said when she had opened the book he had brought her.  
"Connor, I love you." Heather's voice mingled with Brenda's.

-I love you  
-You, Bastard.

Connor got up slowly, his face was dripping.  
"Oh I see your conflict, friend. Well listen to this and do not forget: You need the Virtute Deligere, little Scottish . What you feel for this woman is different from what I have felt for Shakiko. The love that Shakiko offered me was like your love with Heather. She loved me absolutelly, with her soul, with her body. But in what we were, and will equal is in the fear.   
It's fear of love, Connor. You need the courage to face what she feels for you. You can not let her go without knowing it, brother. Nor can you be watching her in the distance as you get older without knowing what might have happened. Neither eternity can erase denial, unreason.  
We can not love, because love for us means pain. Pain to the loss. 

-Ramirez damn liar! Even from eternity you are still as false. You always said I should leave Heather. Why now do you encourage me with this new woman?-Connor hided his head between his hands. 

"Maybe because Heather loved you and you loved her, and you could have her easily. But this new love that starts is not the same. You can not have this woman easily, I'm sorry brother. However, now is the time to love for you. And to have everything you were denied first". 

-What do you mean, Ramirez? 

"Look at you, Connor, look where you´re my friend. What you are doing!   
Is this worthy of you? Is this normal"? 

-This woman is my enemy, spanish-said Connor. 

"Is she? Oh what a golden enemy she must be, brother! I perceive her beauty in you, in your eyes. She really is in your head. But be careful, Connor.  
The obsession is not good. If you have to love again, make sure that she will reciprocate. Do not fall into an unrequited love now, not when there is so little left. Please, do not punish yourself in vain. Any risk is so dangerous for you now. But are you sure she does hate you? ". 

-She does, she did, she will Oh... -Connor looked through the window of Brenda, the empty streets. The windows lacking blinds, but not very far, taxis full of drunks, some prostitute leaning over the stairs of the front doorway. 

"Love is the only thing I can talk to you about without fear, Connor.  
It is the only thing that binds us to mortals, and that makes us vulnerable. For mortals to love is to be reciprocated or not, as for us. It is dying in life or continuing to live and overcome it.  
It is to stop your horse on the road, and go down to see what obstacle there is that does not let you pass. You will find a large stone, or a large flower.  
You will find a beautiful woman who loves you, or another who never will. But love is the only thing that as immortality has no explanation, no one knows where it comes from or why. The Japanese believed in a red thread. A red thread that that tied people destined to walk together in the love.   
They said that each of us was born with one tied to the finger of the little finger of one of our hands. This thread crossed seas, mountains, countries, ice, snow, rain falling on the just and the unjust.  
The red thread saw the light of the beginning of time when God formed the earth and was when His son died on the cross. It crossed the abyss, and it touched the sky and its angels, but it connects us with our soul mate, and it is an unbreakable bond, this is love ".

-Oh love-said Connor-the forbidden word. 

-My red thread was already cut, after Heather's death-Connor said. 

"But did you get see it? Only the immortals we have born with the ability to see it". 

-What are you saying, you fucker? -asked Connor. 

While a moment the old Connor with this long hair, and his kilt stained appeared in froint of Ramirez, so angry like a child and tried to hit him. 

-"Hahaha, come on, brother. You didn´t? Who knows? Maybe is because Heather was not your destiny after all. Search inside your soul, inside your words, and the new woman´s dreams, Connor, maybe your future will help you. I won´t be there, with you. I feel i´ll die soon. I´m not in your present, i´m not in your future, not even in your past. I belong to you, that´s. I have to go now, Connor. But remember, have the courage to love, the Virtute diligere. This is the man´s courage to love, risking everyting what is necessary. On the right moment. Search the red thread, search the truth, scot. You have nothing to win, nothing to lose, everything to know yet about the love, even of an unrequired one. And remember, you´ll learn of this too. Don´t lose your head, listen to your heart, and all will be right". 

Connor felt the goodbye inside his heart. 

He looked to Brenda a last time. 

She had turned on her side. Her back was still pasted on the label of her transparent nightgown.  
Connor smiled.

"Perfect lady has a price after all"  
The courage that Ramirez spoke of, he used.

He gently removed the label from Brenda. He knew that she would not wake up.  
She was like a trunk sleeping.  
Suddenly a red thread was caught in his hand, next to the label.

He heard the laughter of Ramirez behind him, while the Spanish man bowed.   
-Damn man- Connor's voice echoed crossly through the mountains, while his heart was consuming with impatience.

Past and present was one, then Connor put his hand on Brenda's forehead.

-I love you, Connor

It was Heather's voice, but Connor needed this time to be Brenda's.


End file.
